Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

The Key Advantages of Fasting Mimicking vs Water Fasting

20 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:23

In this short presentation, Dr. Wendie Trubow explains three major downsides of water-only fasting compared with fasting‑mimicking protocols. First, water fasting provokes substantially greater hunger because it provides no calories, whereas fasting‑mimicking diets, though calorie‑restricted, still supply enough nutrients to blunt appetite. Second, fasting‑mimicking better protects lean muscle mass; the added nutrition allows weight loss to come primarily from fat, preserving muscle, which is important for longevity, immunity, and overall health. Third, water fasting carries higher safety risks, especially for people on antihypertensive or glucose‑lowering medications, and even healthy individuals may experience light‑headedness, syncope, or fainting due to the complete lack of nutrition. The speaker concludes that fasting‑mimicking is generally easier, more muscle‑protective, and safer for at‑risk populations.

Chapters

What are the downsides to water fasting? That fasting mimicking does not have the three big ones is obviously the ease. So the hunger specifically. Right. So while I would never promise that you won't be at all hungry on a fasting mimicking protocol because it is still calorie reduced, you are way less hungry than water only fasting. The next one is going to be muscle protection, the ability to protect muscle with fasting mimicking protocols. So this means that when you are losing weight, which we see, and quite significantly with fasting and fasting mimicking protocols, when we do fasting mimicking and we add nutrition, we are able to make it just fat, focus weight loss and not touch our muscle, let that be maintained. And this is so critical for longevity, for balance, for immunity, for, you know, so many things, even beyond just looking strong and big. And then the last piece is, is some safety concerns. So, you know, individuals, certainly individuals who have high blood pressure and are on blood pressure medications, people who have high BL blood sugar and are on blood sugar medications, we have to be especially cautious with water only fasting, especially in that population. But even healthy individuals, there's just a higher risk that you'll be lightheaded, that you, you can have syncope or fainting. Right. Like all of these things become a higher risk when we have zero nutrition.